What role can HR, OD and Transformation departments play in increasing productivity and performance in a measurable, quantifiable way that significantly impacts the bottom line? Lindi Cawdry provides a perspective that adds to the current debates around the origins of SA’s falling productivity rates and includes workable solutions to solve this mounting crisis.

by Lindi Cawdry

Lindi
Cawdry is an experienced management consultant in Productivity Management,
Organisational Development, and HR Leadership and Development. Lindi is an
HPCSA-registered psychological counsellor with an honours degree in Psychology
at Wits and a B-Psych (trauma) from UNISA. She is currently the strategic
solutions executive at Cetana Africa.

Cetana Africa is a consulting company that provides a
range of consulting, leadership and organisational development solutions with a
unique focus on “providing South African solutions to South African problems”.
Their interventions are designed to accommodate these factors and include: Change
management, organisational transition management, business strategy
development, transformation and “touch point” communication and stakeholder
relationship strategies, leadership training and development and engagement
programs.

BackgroundOn 13 August 2012 Adcorp holdings (SA’s largest diversified employment-services company) released their latest productivity statistics. The numbers were truly horrifying and stimulated heated debate among economists and industry bodies alike. Adcorp’s findings were widely reported in the press. Herewith an excerpt:

“SA labour productivity at the lowest level in 46 years“Alarmingly, the Adcorp report shows that since 1967, labour productivity has fallen from R7 297 to R4 924 a year, which is a decline of 32,5%. From the 1993 peak, labour productivity has fallen by a steep 41,2%.”

This information conflicts with the statistics produced by the Reserve Bank, which show that productivity is on the increase. Peter Aling, an analyst at Prophet Analytics, explained this discrepancy in an interview on Summit TV, and outlined the difference between labour productivity and general productivity in the Business Day on 21 August 2012. Peter asserted that labour productivity is calculated by taking out the effects of capital, technology advances and improvements in infrastructure. It is related specifically to the calculation of human performance.

This measure explains why many companies may be hitting their targets, yet their productivity levels are extremely poor. Poor productivity impacts on the organisation’s effectiveness and bottom-line profit. The Global Competitiveness Index 2012–2013 highlights the critical importance of this issue. South Africa’s labour market efficiency ranked 113th out of the 144 global economies assessed (down 18 places from last year), and South Africa’s labour–employer relations ranked 144th.

IntroductionEarlier this year I wrote two articles that described how negative internal organisational dynamics generated from fear-based leadership were significantly impeding effective leadership, applied skills and ultimately productivity.

This article builds on the themes and research findings outlined in those previous articles and demonstrates how these feed into the current labour productivity crisis. In this article I will describe how HR, together with OD and Transformation departments, can and must be the catalyst behind increasing productivity and performance. These departments can significantly impact the bottom line in a way that can be measured and quantified. I discuss productivity issues from the understanding that labour productivity applies to all groups and levels within organisations including clerks, administrators and managers, as well as the general labour force. In fact, productivity levels are critically low within administration and many management levels, and this needs to be addressed before we can increase the productivity of labour or the general workforce.

I also broadly highlight the issues that are rarely, if ever discussed, because they are “politically incorrect”, have not been researched well, or don’t support conventional thinking. I hope to provide a perspective that will add to the current debates around the origins of the continually falling rates of productivity, as well as their solutions. »